Annual Awards

Dinner

May 2, 2015

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Our Rundown

Management at San Francisco-based Salon Media has agreed to start talks on a first union contract with its workers, it was disclosed Saturday.

“Salon Media has agreed to recognize the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) as the collective bargaining representative of its editorial staff, whose decision to unionize was unanimous,” the union said in a formal statement.

Workers voted last month to join a union. The company could have forced a formal vote overseen by a third party or perhaps otherwise stalled union recognition. It did not, which now triggers the process of attempting to bargain a first contract.

“The men and women who write, edit, and produce stories for Salon.com have gained a voice on the job, and the intelligence and unity they have brought to the project is an inspiration,” said Lowell Peterson, Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, East. Read more

Richard Bernstein continued his beef with the New York Times’ nail salon exposé and says the editor’s response was late and insufficient.

Bernstein’s article, published on the New York Review of Books website on Friday, came in response to the letter issued by New York Times editors earlier this week. And so, the debate rages on over ‘Unvarnished’ by Times Reporter Sarah Maslin Nir.

The Times’ rebuttal called his critique as “industry advocacy” while Bernstein responded by focusing on the paper’s lack of response to its allegation that classified advertisements don’t offer $10 a day for workers, as was reported by the story. Bernstein is a part owner of two New York City day spas that are operated by his wife and sister-in-law, both Chinese natives, in an industry with many Asian immigrants. Read more

American Journalism Review will cease operation after almost 38 years of publication. The announcement was made on the publication’s website Friday evening. The news comes exactly two years after it ceased the production of its print edition. The magazine was published by Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.

“Over many decades, American Journalism Review has been an incredible value both to the college and to American journalists,” said Merrill College Dean Lucy Dalglish. “Unfortunately, we are unable to provide the resources needed to keep AJR the vibrant, innovative online publication it deserves to be.”

The magazine will no longer be publishing “original” content. However, the existing archives will still be available on the website.

AJR’s death comes almost one and a half year after its redesign in late 2013. Read more

Nevart Apikian

The Post-Standard

A chance assignment, plus an opportunity to cover entertainers and their shows during her first year as a professional journalist, resulted in Nevart Apikian's lifelong career writing about music, musicians, actors, movies and theater.Nevart, a Syracuse native, took her first job at the Sullivan County Evening News in Monticello soon after graduating from Syracuse University. She spent a year covering stories about the courts, county government, town meetings and other news events. But, she also wrote about the entertainers who played the numerous Catskill Mountain resort hotels around Monticello.

After a year, she returned to Syracuse and a reporting job with The Post-Standard. As she recalls, "many assignments later, I covered the touring First Drama Quartet in (Bernard) Shaw's 'Don Juan in Hell.' This led to my becoming the theater and movie critic of the newspaper for more than 25 years."

During that time, Nevart found Syracuse "rich in music, theater and art. I was fortunate in being able to write about the Syracuse Symphony, Syracuse Opera and Syracuse Stage, and the many excellent community theaters, and about television. I recall fondly the former Lyric Circus in Skaneateles and the Pompeian Players."

One of her most interesting experiences, says Nevart, a first-generation American, is the trip she took to Armenia, where her parents were born. During the trip she visited Yerevan, the capital of that small country which lies in the shadow of Mt. Ararat near the Black Sea. The journey also gave her an opportunity to practice the Armenian she learned as a child in Syracuse.

Nevart is a past president of Theta Sigma Phi, a journalism honorary now known as Women in Communications, and of the Central New York Chapter of the National League of American Pen Women. She also is a member of Civic Morning Musicals and the Trip Committee of the Everson Museum of Art.

In looking back on her career in the newsroom, she notes the changes from a time when reporters and writers worked to the click-clack and bell ringing of typewriters to the almost silent word processors of present day computers. She says she is grateful for all of the unique stories she covered and interesting people she met. An example of her unique assignments is among Nevart's prized souvenirs -- a photo of her on an elephant, taken when she covered a circus visit to Syracuse. --Joseph A. Porcello